I'm old, right? Probably old enough to grandfather to many of you. The one thing about the faithful slave doctrine that always disturbed me was the idea that the "collective" determined the organization's course. This is a blatant falsehood. The "anointed" as a group do not choose members of the governing body. They do not submit articles to the Watchtower for publication. They do not meet to hash out doctrinal points. The Faithful Slave/Governing Body doctrine is a contrivance, a lie. If the faithful slave is a collective (most reputable commentators give it another meaning), then the Governing Body is a rebel organization, ignoring those to whom they are responsible. That would make them Apostate! Imagine.
Old Goat
JoinedPosts by Old Goat
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46
The Governing Body wants JWs to really, really understand this one point
by cattails inif you had to guess what point of their teaching.
the governing body wants jws to really, really understand,.
24:45.. the comment highlights that because jesus "did not say that there would be a multitude of slaves scattered throughout the various sects of christendom.
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Anyone Know JW's who Donated Inheritances, Estates,$$$ to WT Society ?
by flipper inif so - without divulging any names , approximately how much was donated to the wt society ?
if you are aware of approximate amounts.
as many know the wt society yearly puts out calls in their publications for witnesses to donate trust funds, wills, inheritances, estates, jewelry, cars and whatever else they have to promote the aleged " kingdom interests " in furthering the " good news " around the world.. personally i feel it's all been a scam to continue exercising control over witnesses by influencing them to financially deprive themselves so the wt society can continue it's operations.
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Old Goat
I have assets not part of the marrital estate. In my old will they all went to the Watchtower Society. In my current will they go to my youngest daughter with instructions on how best to dispose of them for cold hard cash. The Watchtower be damned. They are the source of endless anger and pain.
Only a fool would leave them anything. Most people have family. It should ALL go to your family. Nothing should go to the uncaring slugs who sit in the Watchtower executive offices. I hate them all.
How about that for blunt?
Oh, yes, I talked my mother out of leaving them a 150K annuity too.
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Looking for digital copies of witness books before 1970 for research.
by average joe ini am trying to find a copy of "let your name be sanctified" preferably in pdf or other.
i am trying to research old books that were made before the 1970's.
i would be grateful if people would be kind enough to share what they have for my research.
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Old Goat
those books show up on ebay all the time. they're very inexpensive. And they're not very exciting. does your research have a goal?
The last ediition of qualified to be ministers (1967) is just a ministry school guide. the first edition had a bit of history in the back. it's not very accurate.
your word is a lamp was a rather insipid organizational guide. baptismal (dismal) questions in the back.
things in which it is impossible to lie was a basic doctrines book. boring has heck, poorly written.
These are not hard to find books. ebay or abe.com or a thrift store
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Looking for digital copies of witness books before 1970 for research.
by average joe ini am trying to find a copy of "let your name be sanctified" preferably in pdf or other.
i am trying to research old books that were made before the 1970's.
i would be grateful if people would be kind enough to share what they have for my research.
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Old Goat
Can you give us more details? What are you looking for?
An excellent source for early Watchtower history is http://truthhistory.blogspot.com/ . That site is run by a Witness historian, but he seems to spare no one when it comes to exposing stupidity. He has a book out too. The book is about Nelson Barbour and his beliefs. Excellent book, I think.
There are severals Bible Student sites with older material on them too. There are CD's with Russell material. One of them is always listed on ebay.
If you tell us what you're looking for, we might be able to offer more specific help.
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In the past, FAKE newspaper coverage of WT "International Conventions" in the US
by AndersonsInfo inmany people that post or lurk here at jwn are too young to remember some of the huge international conventions jws held many years ago, but probably have seen impressive photos such as of the 1958 eight-day convention held simultaneously at new yorks yankee stadium and polo grounds.
especially remarkable was the tremendous newspaper coverage of that assembly and other special conventions held in the 1940s and 50s in the united states.
yesterday, when i downloaded somebodys old scrapbook full of long-ago newspaper articles, http://www.archive.org/details/watchtowernewsscrapbook,reporting on jehovahs witnesses so-called international conventions, i couldnt help but remember what i wrote regarding extraordinary newspaper convention coverage in my www.freeminds.org article, how jehovahs witnesses watchtower religion impacted my family history, part 3 and thought id share the information here on jwn for those who are not familiar with how such wonderful coverage came about.
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Old Goat
For a number of reasons I avoid identifiers on this board and seldom post. But I was a Public Relations Servant, later Overseer, and worked at some of the International conventions. Yes, there were special editions sold to conventioners. To my knowledge the Society did not benefit monitarily. But they did use quotations in post assembly articles.
Newspaper reporters are notoriously lazy people. We had endles handouts, short typed up biographies of Knorr or Franz, fact sheets, and similar items that we gave them. Sometimes their articles were a paste job made up from the hand-outs.
I still have a large folder of this material from one of the international conventions. The biography of Franz was especially bad. Not much truth in that bit of propaganda, though we didn't know that at the time.
The society printed a manual for New Service Servants back in the 1950's. It was a how-to booklet. In 1958 all the circuit news service servants atended a pep-talk how-to meeting in New York City during the convention. We were given a mimeographed booklet with sample news releases. The local product was so bad in most circuits that little of it was being published.
I remember Witnesses remarking how wonderful a news article in a large regional newspaper was. This was in the late 1960's. I had to smile because I wrote it. The paper published it as written. The "brothers" thought it remarkable that the paper was so nice to us.
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Please help me publish my book on the JW organisation.
by TheEndIsNigh inmy book, the end is nigh...again (but this time we really mean it) is now finished and available to read.
its a tongue in cheek, real life saga about the life of a second generation jehovahs witness that pokes fun at the organisation that to this day continues to completely screw up the lives of many decent people.
i have uploaded the entire manuscript to a site called slush pile reader.
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Old Goat
Dear EndIs,
Slushpile reader is a rip off. Sorry. My friend Ann Crispin, a fantasy and science fiction writer, has discussed this on her writers beware blog.
If you want publication by a traditional house, you have two approaches. Find a literary agent who handles "Christian" material. There are a number of good agent lists out there, both in print and on the internet. Do not expect the first agent to whom you submit to say yes. They will read the first few paragraphs. Within the first sentence or two they will assess your writing ability. It's a brutal world. Be prepared for rejections. My first book was rejected nearly 20 times before it found a publisher. It's often worse than that. The second approach is to find a "Christian" publishing house or any publisher who may look for that kind of material and submit to them directly. Read their submission guidelines. Check them out on Predators and Editors. There are many, many fraudulent publishers.
Your manuscript must be the best you can make it, brutally edited, clean. It should be your very best. Before you submit to anyone, have someone you trust for their critical ability and grasp of good writing read it and critique it. Join a critique group if you need to. My beta reader is a Canadian English professor. She's sharp and willing to put in the effort.
Commercial publishers look for things that will sell. No matter how good your prose may be, if they do not think it will sell and sell well, they will tell you no.
You can always publish on lulu.com. It's free to you. They offer "packages" for edits and such. Those cost money. If you're confident that you're all ready to go, you do not need them and can publish for free. Their profit comes from selling your book. They take a percentage. Lulu is great for limited interest and academic material that will see small circulation.
Visit Agent's blogs. Get a feel for what is demanded of you as a writer. It's an exceptional book that sees publication. Typically my agent gets 500-1000 queries in a month. An assistant wades through them first, pruning out the really awful. Out of that 'slush pile' she may request a "partial" from two individuals, sometimes three. A partial is the first few chapters of your manuscript. (Some agents ask for the first three chapters with your initial submission). She will either ask for the entire manuscript or tell you no.
Do not complain about rejections, and by all means do not say nasty things about publishers, editors, or agents. It's a very small world. Everyone talks to everyone else. You post something nasty or complain loudly about someone in the industry, others will hear it. Bad idea. Grit your teeth.
Those are your options.
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Where did 607 come from?
by MrFreeze inokay so we've obviously established on this board that 607 is not the correct date that babylon destroyed jerusalem.
even before 1914 came around, the bible students still thought 1914 would be a pivital date.
the only way they can gain that info is from the 7 times or w/e.
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Old Goat
Most reputable scholars date Zoroaster to the tenth century b.c. That would post date Abraham.
David Pareus does mention the date 606, but that's 606 A.D. not B.C. He felt the symbolic woman of Revelation fled into the "wilderness" in 606 AD. There are five references to 606 in his book A Commentary Upon the Divine Revelation of the Apostle and Evangelist John. (see the English translation from latin, 1644) Each reference is to a date AD and a fulfilment on the Christian Church. If you're really curious, a copy of the book translated into English is in the University of Michigan library.
A long string of writers looked to 606AD as a prophetic date. Another example is Edward Wells, Rector of Cotesbach. He cites the 606 date, but it's AD. not BC. You can find that in An Help for the More Easy and Clear Understanding of the Holy Scriptures: Being The Book of Daniel Explain'd published in 1716.
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Anyone can recommend a book about 1st century christianity?
by zakheyold ini just finished "la vie quotidienne des premiers chretiens.
95-197" ("early christians' daily life") by a.-g. hamman.
it describes everyday life of 2nd century christians.
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Old Goat
Alan F. Segal's Paul the Convert, Yale University Press, 1990
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100
Where did 607 come from?
by MrFreeze inokay so we've obviously established on this board that 607 is not the correct date that babylon destroyed jerusalem.
even before 1914 came around, the bible students still thought 1914 would be a pivital date.
the only way they can gain that info is from the 7 times or w/e.
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Old Goat
From the book Nelson Barbour: The Millennium's Forgotten Prophet (available at lulu.com) :
Barbour and his associates did not immediately reconsider Gentile Times. The issues of an invisible parousia and other chronological speculations came first. We also do not know who among them initiated the discussion. In the absence of other claims, it is probably safe to suppose that Barbour was responsible for concluding Gentile Times ended not in the 1870s, but in 1914. The first mention of the 1914 date as the end of The Times of the Gentiles is in the September 1875 issue of The Herald of the Morning. In passing Barbour remarked, “The time of the Gentiles,” viz. Their seven prophetic times of 2520 years ... which began when God gave all into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, in 606 B. C; do not end until 1914.
Barbour is indebted to John Aquila Brown for the 2520 year computation. Brown in turn owes the calculation of the “seven times” of Daniel’s prophecy as 2520 years and the association of it to The Times of the Gentiles to Joshua Spalding.
Spaulding wrote Divine Theory; A System of Divinity in 1798, though it seems not to have been published until 1808. Spalding, writing of the seven-times of Daniel’s Great Tree Vision, said:
Seven times, or one full week of years, upon the great prophetic scale, is 2520 years. This supposition is much strengthened by the consideration, that the continuance of mystical Babylon is said expressly to be for a time, times, and a half; and as the times allotted for this division of the empire, is the half of a week, three times and a half, it is natural to conclude, that the whole of the times, called the times of the Gentiles, is a whole week, or seven times.
Though Spalding was an American clergyman, the British Library Catalogue testifies that his books circulated in Britain . It is possible that J. A. Brown was familiar with Spalding. Yet it seems certain that Brown played a part in influencing Barbour that Spalding did not.
That Gentile Times were 2520 years became a standard view among expositors. The popularization of the 2520 year calculation was probably due to George Stanley Faber. He used the calculation in The Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, published in 1828.
When The Christian Guardian and Church of England Magazine reviewed Faber’s book in 1830, it accepted without question the 2520 day calculation, though it suggested Faber had no basis for his start date. Edward Bickersteth adopted the calculation in the mid-1830s. His reputation as a pious Bible scholar sealed it into Advent thinking.
If the 2520 year calculation isn’t original to Barbour, nothing else in his ‘“Gentile Times” calculation belongs to him either. Faber mentioned the 606 B.C. date in his 1811 work A Dissertation on the Prophecy Contained in Daniel ix, 24-27 .
In the 1820’s, several authors pointed to 606 B.C. as the date at which the seventy-year long exile began. In 1834 Matthew Habershon mentioned the 606 B.C. date, but calculated the “seven times” from three years later, ending them in 1918.
William Miller adopted the 2520 year calculation but ended it in 1843. John Dowling, a Baptist pastor, criticized William Miller’s method for calculating the “seven times,” suggesting that " it would have answered the purpose ... much better had this subtraction happened to have brought out the number 606 B.C., the date of the commencement of the 70 years captivity of the Israelites in Babylon ."
It seems certain that the ultimate source for Barbour’s 1914 calculation is E. B. Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae, where the 606 B.C. to 1914 calculation is found.
The next mention of the 1914 date in connection to “Gentile Times” I can find is by an anonymous author writing in The Original Session Magazine in 1850. The magazine was published in Scotland but saw circulation in the United States . This author suggested that the “seven times” would end in 1897, yet his calculation took him to 1914. He arrives at his other dates, including the 1897 date by a complicated series of additions and subtractions from the basic “2520 - 606 = 1914” calculation. If one removes all the puzzling additions and subtractions, one has Barbour’s usage. There is no way to know if Barbour was familiar with the Session magazine but he almost certainly was familiar with John Dowling and Habershon, and he tells us he read Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae.
It is worth noting that Samuel Davies Baldwin taught that the actual date was 607 B.C. He dated the seventy years from 607- 537 B.C., a view later adopted by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Baldwin, S. D.: Armageddon: Or the Overthrow of Romanism and Monarchy’ The Existence of the United States Foretold in the Bible, Its Future Greatness; Invasion by Allied Europe; Annihilation of Monarchy; Expansion into the Millennial Republic, and its Dominion over the Whole World , Applegate and Company, Cincinnati, 1863, page 424.
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miller and russell... the best laugh i've had for a while
by Aussie Oz ini just can't contain my mirth (and disgust ) about the the history of the wt soc any more!.
the history of miller and his teachings, barbour being a millerite and a guide to the then young russell cemented the truth of the modern day wt organizations history as opposed to its own whitewashed version of history.. for 37 years i saw them as the one true religion.
now i just see them as total frauds.
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Old Goat
It's laughable?
I used to think that too. After reading the Barbour biography, I've changed my mind to a degree. Others were looking for the millennial reign of Christ. I'm looking forward to the Millennial reign of Christ. What puzzles me is their acceptance of an already failed chronology, or any so called Bible chronology. The book by Schulz and de Vienne quotes Russell as saying that he believed in an invisible presence before he met Barbour. He and his group had just started considering bible chronology, thinking it would be the only way to know if Christ was present. To me, this is the fatal flaw. This seems a misreading and misunderstanding of Matthew chapter twenty-four.
IF his return is invisible, why not content yourself with waiting for him to reveal himself? Why speculate on dates and fiddle with prophetic math. It is some comfort to Watchtowerites (Hey, I was one for a longer period than most of you have been alive, and they still count me as one of them) that Russell did no more, and a lot less, than other groups. The difference is that Russell succeeded in building an enduring organization, agressive in propaganda, committed to their message.
Some "apostates" see every flaw as something to laugh at. I don't. I made the choice to become a witness back there in the late mid-1940's. It was my decision. I wasn't stupid then, and I'm not stupid now. I take responsiblity for my decisions. I watched the organization change into something more and more dictatorial and less and less the welcoming, truth-seeking company it was.
I met and liked some of those you poke fun at. With a few exceptions (The name Harry C. Good comes to mind among others) most of those committed to the organization that I knew were men of faith - even if misguided belief. I have always been seen as a maverick. That's because I am, to use the words of one now deceased governing body memeber, "a quiet rebel." I generate my own share of nonsense, I suppose. But I also hate nonsense. As a young man I admired F. W. Franz. He was likeable in an odd way. Later, I came to see him as a fruit-cake who found himself in power.
That Witnesses have Millerite connections is not disturbing. What is disturbing is the Governing Body's interference in the small details of everyday life. I should add that I find most of the current literature insipid. I still read it, because there are gems, starteling and interesting insigts into Bible verses. I have no trouble seen Witnesses as Christians. I have trouble with the organization when it puts its opinions in the place of God.